Editor:
It’s remarkable how many people have approached me since the Jasper evacuation – including people I’d never met before – openly expressing their anxiety.
This makes clear to me the vital importance of the towns of Canmore and Banff hosting a gently facilitated forum for townsfolk to decompress their grief and fear. As someone familiar with trauma on many scales, it’s clear that townsfolk are traumatized, as wildfires have approached nearer to our own doorsteps.
Without pro-actively, responsively processing this trauma – which is a very natural response to something that is so out of our control – we become markedly less resilient. We need to actively enhance our resilience – not letting it fester like unattended embers in our own inner fires.
Wildfires don’t just require practical responses. As humans, our mental and emotional responses need to be cared for, too. Akin to celebrations of life, in which the living collectively process their grief in community, honouring the loss of their loved one, we need this as communities in the context of wildfires, collectively working through the impacts of the swiftly arising reality of wildfires near to and in mountain towns.
I highly recommend that these forums take place soon – before the winter distractions that we truly do need in order to regenerate our deep well-being and our reserves – before the next wildfire season arrives next spring. Let’s invite our Lake Louise and Exshaw neighbours to join us, as this truly is a shared reality.
As humans, we’ve controlled nature for so long, anthropocentrically (humans first) pressing our insatiable wants upon a delicate balance. It is time to grieve and to prepare and to become more respectful and cooperative with nature again.
For those who may be keener than our municipalities coordinating, the Palliative Care Society of the Bow Valley is apparently offering wildfire grief support meetings online.
Ariole K. Alei,
Canmore
